


Master Frodo

by Erudammit



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: Dark, Eldritch Abominations, Gen, Horror, Lovecraftian Monster(s), M/M, Monsters, Power Imbalance, but again, but like..... lite, everyone's a little ooc, i didn't write them as romance but rereading it? might as well tag it, ish, like diet horror lite, lite, next week is finals week but here i am, no beta we die like men, not a healthy romance if it's a romance tho so jot that down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-24 15:42:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21680371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erudammit/pseuds/Erudammit
Summary: Samwise Gamgee had seen a decent amount of things over the course of his years in the Shire, but since meeting Master Frodo, he couldn’t recall any of them.
Relationships: Frodo Baggins & Sam Gamgee, Frodo Baggins/Sam Gamgee
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	Master Frodo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [idkhbyfm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idkhbyfm/gifts).



> Jeez, apparently I haven't posted in over a year? Anyway, here to change that. (please pardon me being rusty it has been a Hot Second)

Samwise Gamgee had seen a decent amount of things over the course of his years in the Shire.

He had seen the meadows on the first morning of summer, dewdrops glittering in the sun among the blades of lush green grass, only the movement of the occasional window shutter to betray that this quiet snapshot was not a painting. He had seen red-brown worms, inching their way over dark topsoil after a long rain, and watched them squirm between his fingers when he picked them up to move them to the back of the garden. He had seen the earthy colors of a teabag steep into hot water, blossoming when he stirred just a little. 

Samwise Gamgee had seen a decent amount of things over the course of his years in the Shire, but since meeting Master Frodo, he couldn’t recall any of them.

It wasn’t that his mind went blank the first time he saw Master Frodo and that he suddenly knew nothing.

The first time he met Master Frodo, all that he experienced was momentary confusion. Samwise was a child then and, while it wasn’t uncommon for him to be confused, the source of his confusion was typically something he could explain. Granted, this confusion wasn’t unexplained for a lack of trying.

“Why are his eyes like _that_?” was Samwise’s first question, but he didn’t get an answer, though he asked both of his parents.

“They’re blue, just like yours are brown,” was their response, but it wasn’t an _answer_.

It also wasn’t correct, Samwise began to believe.

He’d seen blue in the sky and the water and the berries that Farmer Maggot had tried to cultivate that one year. Master Frodo’s eyes weren’t blue, not the irises. They weren’t any color. They looked more like the worms Samwise had seen in his garden, minuscule and writhing in a tightly knit ring around pupils of black that Samwise never saw reflect light. Samwise would swear he could sometimes see a worm fall out of formation with the rest and stray just a little into the whites of Master Frodo’s eyes, but Master Frodo never seemed to notice when that happened.

The longer Samwise looked into Master Frodo’s eyes, the less color he saw.

But Samwise supposed, if someone painted a picture of Master Frodo’s eyes, they’d look blue. 

His parents told him not to bother Master Frodo asking why, which was okay since Samwise hadn’t intended on doing so anyway. He got over it quickly enough. Still, whenever he looked too long at Master Frodo’s irises—he never dared look too long at his pupils—he couldn’t help but be fixated by them.

Maybe the fixation wasn’t Master Frodo’s eyes so much as it was being in his presence though. Master Frodo was like a drug and Samwise found that the addiction that came in time to being with him was intoxicatingly suffocating. Other people said that he and Master Frodo were thick as thieves, especially after Master Frodo became the first to call him Sam, but Sam—because that was his name now—hardly noticed.

That was probably when Sam began to forget.

First, he forgot the color blue.

Sam began to agree with everyone else when they said that Master Frodo’s eyes were blue, because they were bluer than any sky or river or berry could ever hope to be. To Sam, blue writhed when you looked too long at it, so it followed that the only blue that could exist was in Master Frodo’s eyes. Now, when he saw a bluebird in passing, all that he noticed was how stagnantly unremarkable it was. The worms in the soil of his garden appeared just a loose mockery, and they too disappeared in time.

The grass in the Shire meadows turned gray and a rooster turned up one day missing his plumage, a while after the deaths of Master Frodo’s parents. Sam heard whispers from the older folk about Master Frodo and the uncle who had taken him in but was quick to shut them down. Though Master Frodo didn’t express gratitude for it outwardly, Sam knew he was pleased with him. He took Sam to Bag-End and his uncle clapped Sam on the shoulder in thanks.

“Us Bagginses are only different in the good way, young Sam, and it’s heartening to see such a fellow as you understand that,” Master Frodo's uncle said. 

Sam nodded to Master Frodo’s uncle with a proud, “Yessir, Mr. Bilbo.”

He was told he’d be doing the gardening for the Bagginses from then on and when he relayed the message to his old Gaffer, his Gaffer said “good.”

After that day, though Sam was sure that he could remember if he tried (though he’d have to want to first), he forgot everything except for Master Frodo entirely.

Maybe that was why he noticed so fast when things began to shift.

Master Frodo’s eyes grew static, dormant, and Sam would find his hair, brittle and dry, all over the place. No matter how frantically he tended to the perennials, they would wilt, gray, and Sam found himself panicked that Master Frodo would have no more flowers. 

When he asked Master Frodo about it, he was told that he was just grieving over the departure of his dear uncle.

Sam had his doubts, however, when Master Frodo’s eyes strayed to the mantle. 

That night, Sam examined the mantle with great scrutiny, but only discovered the same ring that had been sitting there since Master Frodo’s uncle’s departure. As Sam looked closer, he saw that the ring was a golden yellow, a color as vibrant as Master Frodo’s eyes. It could have been the flickering shadows behind him, cast by the fire and reflected in the ring’s surface, but the yellow seemed to sway. It didn’t have nearly as much hue as Master Frodo, but it _moved_. That was enough for Sam. He dusted it with a feather duster, not daring to touch it, and went to go ask Master Frodo if the ring was his uncle.

Master Frodo laughed.

‘No,’ Master Frodo said, ‘it’s not my uncle.’

Master Frodo didn’t seem to understand why Sam had asked, even though the ring’s color shifted as Sam had only seen Master Frodo’s eyes and Master Frodo’s uncle’s silver hair do, but Sam knew that he must. 

A week later, Master Frodo stopped by the gardening plot. Sam felt Master Frodo's shadow fall over him, cool relief from the hot sun above, and turned at once greet him.

"Care to sit?" Sam offered. Master Frodo seemed to like to the idea and he reclined upon the dirt as if he had been prepared for the proposal. He lay quite still for several seconds, breathing deeply with his knees bent and his back and the soles of his feet pressed to the earth. Sam waited patiently and, after a moment, he sat up and crossed his legs.

‘I wish it was my uncle,’ Master Frodo said.

Sam remembered at once what Master Frodo referred to. “Why?”

‘I wouldn’t be so lonely.’ Master Frodo reached for the dirt and brushed over a spot with one of his fingertips, absentminded. A moment later, a worm emerged from the dark, loose earth where his fingertip had touched.

 _“You have me_ , _”_ Sam would have said to anyone else, but he understood that Master Frodo was not anyone. “Will you be lonely forever?” he asked instead.

‘That’s up to me,’ answered Master Frodo, meeting Sam’s eyes with the black pupils that seemed to see right through him. Sam felt warmth blossom in his chest even as his skin grew cold from the gaze and he carefully plucked a purple petal from the flower beside him; delicately, so that its gift to Master Frodo would stay intact.

“You’re in good hands then.” Sam extended the petal to Master Frodo. Master Frodo took it wearing the expression of a smile. He closed his hand around the petal and, when he opened it, the petal rested uncrushed in his palm. Sam thought that the petal was infinitely more beautiful.

‘I could choose to not be lonely,’ Master Frodo pondered aloud, letting a sudden breeze sweep the petal from his hand and watching it tumble slowly to the grass just inches beneath. ‘The ring wants me to, you know.’

Sam didn’t know but he nodded to Master Frodo because it made sense. Master Frodo sighed then, but it didn’t seem to be in response to Sam’s nod. ‘But the company would be a falsehood, in the end. The ring’s just like you, Sam, only more special. Special enough to stand out but not special enough to be real company.’

“I don’t stand out?” Sam prompted, wondering if he should be more offended.

‘Nobody here stands out like the ring, but you’re still my favorite.’

Sam frowned to himself. “But does that mean I make you lonely?”

‘Sometimes. But less than others and you don’t lie and tell me you won’t.’

“Oh,” responded Sam, happy. He gave Master Frodo another petal, yellow, this time. He never gave Master Frodo blue petals because blue was reserved for Master Frodo’s eyes. “Are you okay with being lonely then?”

Master Frodo pinched the yellow petal between two fingers and held it up to the sun so that the yellow glowed, nearly as real a color as the ring. ‘I am,’ Master Frodo said.


End file.
